Apparently a lot of people seem to need less sleep as they grow older. But that's not true.
Until recently I thought it wasn't really such a serious issue. After all, what a waste of time, just lying there, not doing anything! So, as a matter of routine I'd be up and doing all kinds of chores, thinking and writing. My mind was trained to it. 4 am. Get up! It was a pleasant sort of compulsion.
Then came the day I watched a documentary about the need for sleep. It was fascinating, but very scary too. I'd been missing out on years of sleep, I calculated. Sleep is apparently the time when your brain actually regenerates. You might be lying there, but your body is effectively paralysed, and your poor old overworked brain is desperately trying to get those grey cells and synapses in order for the next day’s work.
Help!
That's the thing...finding a solution to the problem of lying there awake. I mean, if your brain needs about seven or eight hours to do the repair job, well, I've been horribly short-changing mine for years now! Horrors! I've joined the estimated 40 million people with long term sleep disorders, and I didn't even know the really bad health problems that are lurking around me. Too depressing to contemplate, but I recently decided to try and find a way to get that important REM sleep.
It's nice when you find a solution to this, that doesn't require medication, or anything special except to easily train yourself into sleep readiness mode. Even if you wake up after a few hours sleep, you can readily use this method to return to sleeping. The first night I tried it, my sleep was improved. Now I can get around seven hours of sleep, which is a whole lot better than the 4-5 hours I was getting before I tried it.
Vicki